Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard - Armchair Anonymous: Crazy Gym II

Episode Date: September 18, 2026

Dax and Monica talk to Armcherries! In today's episode, Armcherries tell us their crazy gym stories.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Anonymous. I'm Dan Shepard and miniature mouse is walking here. Today we have Crazy Gym, Part 2. Tell us a crazy gym story. We have four that really, really deliver. Be careful in the gym, and please enjoy Crazy Gym part 2. This podcast is brought to you by Squarespace. We've talked before about Rob building our website on Squarespace, and I bring it up again because it's a perfect example of what they do well. Rob had all the pieces, the content, the vision, the ideas, but he needed something to actually take all that and make it public-facing. And Squarespace was that bridge. Maybe you're in the same spot. You've been developing something, a business, a skill set, a body of work, and it's been private.

It's been yours. But at some point, you're ready to put it out there, and that transition from private to public can feel like a huge leap. Squarespace makes it feel like a step. Beautiful templates, built-in SEO, email campaigns, scheduling, analytics, everything you need to go from, I've been working on this to here it is, come find me. All in one place, no code, no stitching together a bunch of different tools. So if you've been sitting on something and waiting for the right moment, this might be it. Head to squarespace.com slash dax for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use offer code dax to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. You gotta know, I'm gonna keep from shining.

Hi. Is it Maisie? Macy, like the department store. Oh, love it. Macy, like the department store. And when people fuck it up, what do they most regularly say? Macy, which honestly, I don't really even notice the difference. I get a lot of Massey.

Oh, no. Yeah, whatever. Monica, happy birthday. Oh, good job. You're a hardcore arm, Jerry. I'm so excited to be here. Thank you. We're excited to have.

you. Now, when you were getting ready, this one, you have a very fun orange, like, let's celebrate, let's be positive. Was that in the mix today? You're like, I'm in a good mood. Yes. And I knew that Monica's a fashionista. So I was like, what are my colors? How do I come off as my best self today? You're really doing it. It's a great color. Thank you. Where are you? I am in a place that you were recently visiting Dax. So Denver or Birmingham? I'm in Denver. You're in Denver. Okay. Are you from there or did you move there. I have moved around a lot, but I spent most of my childhood in the Denver area. And I actually went to your guys as Denver show when Monica was a guest. Oh my goodness. Wow, I forgot. That was a long time ago. Lots changed. I've gotten much older. I was reflecting on that while I was in

Denver. I was like, oh, the last time I was here, we did that show. Wow. Fun, fun, fun, fun. It was very fun. I had a great time. Okay, so you have a crazy gym story. I do. I work full time in communications and PR, but my like passion job is I coach group fitness classes on the side. So like 5 a.m. 6 p.m., coaching classes. I've done this for a long time. I've taught just about everything that is available. But right now, I really just teach like hit and strength training, but I've taught spin, anything you can think of. Have you seen an explosion in females entering the weight training space? I feel like there's a good and positive movement towards that. Yes, and I love it. Bone density. Do you do privates?

I have in the past. Let's do it. I'm not ruling this out. I love it because you know you get to see people at all different stages of life. Like we have women lifting their entire pregnancies or coming back from back surgery. In my free time, I like to try different gyms and like go take classes at other places where I can be anonymous. No one knows me. Just show up, have a good workout. And also learn from other trainers, see what they're doing, what works, what doesn't. So this story takes place in 2021. In that time, it's hard to read. remember because it feels like forever ago, we were still doing group fitness classes in COVID facial mask. I was teaching spin at the time. So I got these really nice Under Armour brand and masks that were athletic material. So they soak up the sweat better. And then they were kind of like shaped. So they didn't collapse into your mouth when you're like running around and breathing really hard. So I was no stranger to working out in masks is the moral of this story before I tell you what went down. I'd heard about this gym that was like in my neighborhood. And the really cool thing was they offered altitude training. So in one of the rooms, they changed the oxygen level so that it

simulates you trainee at high elevation. Oh, this feels dangerous. Like if this machine goes awry and everyone just slowly dies in there because of oxygen. Oh my God, like final destination. Thankfully that didn't happen, but it is a little risky. You're also already at altitude now. Or this didn't take place in Denver? No, it was, but we all like to be extreme. You want to be at base camp for K2? Yeah. So they offered that workout, and it's mostly strength training in that room.

And then they offer another class, treadmills, a little bit more like hit style, cardio and lifting. That morning, I taught two spin classes, 6 and 7 a.m. I went to work, and I signed up for the strength training class after work in the altitude room because I was like, this is cool. I've never done this. I chug my protein shake. And if you do a lot of workouts, you know, you have your routine.

And I wore my shoes that are specifically for weight training. And even like my sports bras is not the one I would wear on a run. Your fuel before. So I'm all ready for like heavy lifting. And I get there, check in a very nice facility. And everyone's kind of like huddled in the main area. There's like 30 people in the main area. And they're like getting hyped up, bouncing around, high-fiving.

And they're like, benchmark 5K. you know, like, and you really pumped up. And I was like, what's going on? They're like, we're all running a 5K for time today. That's just not what I was expecting. It didn't say anything on the schedule or anything. And I'd already done two spin classes that day. But I was also like, I paid $30 for this class.

And I need to prove to these people that I can run a 5K. Like, this is about to be a competition now. How it worked since there were so many people just now in this one room, you had a partner. One partner would run the 5K for time. And you would mark down their time when they finish. And you'd hype them up to your. him on and then you would switch and you would run. So I decided, you know, I'm the new girl. Why don't you go first? But in my head, I was like, I need to know what time to be.

Of course. Because this is now an unspoken hot. Tish. Oh, I know. I love your spirit. The people in this gym are phenomenal athletes. She was crushing it. I was starting to doubt myself, cheering her on the whole time. We're all in our masks. She finishes. I congratulate her. And I'm like a little bit nervous at this point. So I come out hot. I jump on the treadmill, really push her my pace. I'm scared already. I get to like mile two and a half. Since I do run, I have that like mental game where I know the last part is always going to be the hardest. Your body can keep going. Your brain will tell you you're tired. You know, I'm doing all the coaching in my head. I'm like, you got this. You got this. A lot of times when things are about to happen with your body,

you might get like a hot flash or a little tummy rumbling. But I think my body was already in such a stress state from pushing this pace. There was zero warning whatsoever. And no. Unauthorized evacuation from my mouth begins to happen. Okay. With a mask on. You're looking at an aspiration here. Yeah. Yeah.

And you're on the treadmill. Oh, my goodness. All of this happens in like 0.005 seconds. You're just vomiting in your mask. I'm vomiting. I put my hands up to like involuntarily try to catch it. While that's happening, I trip over my feet. And it's like a belly flop onto the treadmill.

Can I ask what speed you had the treadmill set at? I normally run it like a seven, so I'm thinking I was like at an eight. Okay. Oh, no, that's fast. Okay. So it's like full frontal smack onto the treadmill. In the process of that happening, you know, when you like pop a bag of chips or something, it was like all the vomit squished out of my mask. Water balloon, big explosion of vomit.

Yeah. Fuck, all over the treadmill. And now just quickly, if I can imagine, now you have a ton of vomit on the spinning conveyor belt that's going to also pelt. It's going to spatter. This is an unmitigated disaster. Yeah, I fly backwards. Thankfully, it wasn't like the one where the person was taking their sweatshirt off. That's one of my favorite stories of all time.

I mean, going around and around. I just skid straight back. But vomit's flying everywhere. My partner's standing there like, what do I do? And you said you had just pounded a protein shake smoothie? Yeah. So you had, what, 20, 30 ounces of fluid? Just pure protein coming out.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. My partner was very good. She stayed very calm. And she was just like, we need help. She didn't yell. But yeah, vomit's flattering everywhere. I'm just kind of in shock. Like at this point, my mask is not on. I have this stuff like into my hair because it all like squished across my face. You're laying on the ground behind the treadmill at this point. Yeah. But my inclination is to pop up and just be like, everything's fine. Yeah, nothing happened. And I was like, do you have a mop? I'll clean it up. And I just like went into fix it mode. So all the coaches, because all the coaches were there for this big celebration, run over. And they're like, this is a badge of honor. You pushed yourself so hard that you threw up in class. This is where that workout community tips a little bit into insanity.

Like you can imagine if you had died, they'd be jumping up and down with excitement. You put you to the ultimate goal. It was crazy. The coach was like, I'm an EMT. This is nothing. So he was really great. He cleaned it up. Do you start thinking it might be a meat cute?

Was he like tenderly wiping puke off your cheeks or anything? My mind was in other places. They got my partner like a new shirt to put on. So they really wanted everyone to stay and do like a little circle, you know, hand. That's over. And I was like, I really got to go. And they were like, no, you are the champion today. You need to stay.

No one wants to stand by me. I'm just huddled. This is a sad story. This Monica, you would, can you even imagine? No. That'd be the last day I was all. Yeah, yeah. If you had to stand there why people are celebrating me. No, by the way, though, I just wouldn't. I'd be going and then I would just run out. Cry, you'd be crying. Of course. And then the

cry would make the vomit like even thin. Wash it off. But it would be thinner. I'm so sorry that happened to you. It's okay. I mean, it made for a good story. And I did email the owners the next day. And I was like, great thing you have going on. Really excited to try the altitude room. I think it would be helpful in the future if you can just update the schedule. Like if there's a special class. So people know what they're getting into. And they were. very receptive. So kudos to them. I've been back since then. So are you still exercising at this pace? Yes. I tore my ACL two years ago. So I kind of slowed down a little bit after that. And then I recently broke my collarbone. So I haven't been lifting for like the last six weeks.

Yeah. Oh no. Same with Dax. Well, motorcycles, but it's all the same injury. When you go over the handlebars, right? Did you go over the handlebars? It did. Yeah. Yeah. That's a bar where you doing downhill or what was happening? We were gravel biking in Denali National Park, and I think I was just like looking at the scenery. Movement is dangerous. And life-saving. Yeah. Well, Macy, that story was awesome. You went through the ringer, my friend. It was visceral, too. Yeah, so be careful on your treadmills. If I can just, like, give you a little shot of Monica. My husband and I have been trying to get pregnant for like the last year, and I've had a handful of miscarriages and it's been a rocky road. And I recently started listening to Race to 35 because I think we may need to go down that avenue with some medical assistance.

And I was like, I know what you expect because Monica, my friend Monica, has done this and she survived. I did survive and you'll survive too. That's amazing. Thank you. And just the bravery it took you to do that in such a public way is really inspiring. I appreciate it. I'm going to send you all the love and all the luck. And it's going to go great.

Thank you. Well, lovely meeting you made. I told my friend Erica, who's my Callie, that I'd give her a shout out because I got her hooked on you guys. We love that. Shout out to Erica. Shout out Erica. But thank you guys. So nice to meet you guys.

Nice to meet you. Thank you so much. And Monica, let me know if you want to train. I will. Take care. Bye. I don't want to train because you get hurt. Well, I don't know if you'll be training on that level, but who knows.

Maybe she'll have you running 5K. That is a thing I'm more able to do is. run than lift, but I need to lift. Also, fair to say you haven't had a ton of experience lifting, so you're not sure that you're better at one than the other. You just have more history doing one. I have more history. I have the body for it a little more.

Boobes are hard for lifting. No, for running. And lifting because when I lift, I have to live so much already. I'm always lifting. You're always lifting. You don't need to lift. I'm ABL. Let's talk to Alex.

Oh my God. Hi. Alex? This is crazy. I'm really nervous right now. Oh, no. Don't be nervous. First of all, are you a gamer?

You have an incredibly good-sounding headset. I'm not a gamer, but my brother is actually leaving with me, and he's a true gamer. I like your headsets. They're pretty good looking. Oh, thank you. These are our classic shore, right? No, that's our microphones. Oh, DT-770 Studio.

Okay. I'm writing that down. Yeah, please too. Okay, I'm not going to say it out loud, but I saw your last name when the Zoom started, and that's an incredibly interesting last name. What's the origin of that? I'm Brazilian, so that's a Brazilian less name. Love it.

That last portion means son, so we don't do junior in Brazil. Oh, that's so cool. Okay, okay. And what generation are you? Who came here from Brazil? My whole family moved here about six years ago, but I'm Brazilian. Oh, so you were raised in Brazil? Yep.

And where are you at currently? Florida. I'm going to keep it at Florida. Okay. Keep it anonymous. Okay. So you have a crazy gym story. I do have a crazy gym story.

It will take a turn. Okay, good. This happened a year ago. I was finishing my second year of college going into my third year. I live in a student housing, which means like we get new roommates every year. And my past roommates were moving out. I have an empty apartment. And it's starting a fall.

People want to start going out. We need to look good. So I started going to the gym. So I'm going to this new gym. I'm not usually one to be socializing at the gym. But there's this guy and we start talking. And at first, everything was okay. He was just a guy who was helping me out with my workouts. It became pretty clear that we had sort of the same schedules because every time that I was at the gym, he would be there. So we just became gym buddies. Everything was fine up until two weeks later when I get an email from my complex. with the new roommate's listings. I'm already scared. Me too. Really quick, I presume you're working out at like the student gym for the school. Are you like off campus at like a chain gym? Off campus gym just because I go to a pretty big school. So it's kind of hectic to work out at the school gym.

But I get an email from the complex. And in that email, I'm scrolling through the names and I see this guy's name. And for the story, I'm going to call him Damon. Oh, all right. Okay, great. It reminds me of Matt. obviously. Yeah, yeah, sure. They'll be easy for you to remember. Let's call Matt Damon, actually. No, I have a feeling this person does not resemble Matt Damon at all.

I don't want to give Matt Damon that description. So let's not do that. Okay. Damon is on that list. And when I look, I go through the email a couple of times because I cannot believe this. I didn't even know that he was in college. But either way, I sent him a text. And I'm like, hey, like, I saw that your name was on my roommate's list for next year. are you in school? I didn't know this. And then he was like, yeah, I saw your post and I saw that you lived at this complex. So I looked it up. And it looked like a pretty cool complex. So I signed up for the complex. He told me that it was like a pure coincidence. And he was very happy that he got randomly assigned to my unit. At that time, are you taking it all at face value? Or are you starting to get a little bit of spiky senses? As you guys say, that was my first ding, ding, ding, ding. Okay, okay, okay. That was maybe ding. We don't have ding and ding yet, but we definitely have ding. The first ding. That was a little bit of a reflect for me, but I was like, okay, at least I know one of my roommates who are moving in. We already work out together. He seems like a cool guy.

Everything will be fine. For the next couple months, everything is chill. We are roommates. We do roommate stuff together. We watch movies. We work out. We go to the library. At one point, all of my roommates shared locations.

At one point, I had Damon's location. One day I checked, he was at a community college and to everybody in the apartment. he presented himself as a university student. That was the second thing. It became pretty clear that he was not going to our school. I now know this information about him. So one day I actually confront him about the whole thing. And he just lays out so much new information that I didn't know about.

So he is not going to my school. He goes to a community college. He was too embarrassed to tell the roommates that he did not get into my school. I can understand how that I might feel. Then he had a cool personality. He was very chill. And in a span of two weeks, his whole mood just changed. He would come slamming the doors in the apartment.

We would hear him yelling in his room, crying in his room. Oh, no. We didn't know what was going on, but me as a friend, I was the only one close to him in the apartment. I decided to have a conversation with him. And that's when he laid out to me that he impregnated a girl, his ex-girlfriend. Oh, okay. All right. At first, he wanted to pretend that it was not his son.

I was like, I think the most right thing for you to do right now is to get a paternity test. Yeah. But he doesn't want to get a paternity test. A couple months later, the girl actually takes him to court because she's been asking for help because she's pregnant, she got caused, and he's just ghosting the girl. But at the same time that he's ghosting the girl, I start to see that he's a creep. Because I had his locations, we roommates found out that he was creeping outside of her apartment, just trying to see if guys were coming in or now. Oh, boy. I decide that this is not someone that I want to be hanging out with, but I'm in the situation that now he's my roommate.

So this now is December of last year. I'm trying to keep my distance, but now his whole obsession with the girl sort of transformed into obsession with me. Every time I would get out of the apartment, there would be questions. about who I was hanging out with, where I was going, what time I would be back. This pattern kept going up until March. He's now taking steroids. And I think he's getting some Freud rage. His mood is not the same.

We live in a five-bedroom apartment. So there's me and four other guys. He was a pretty clean guy. But the apartment started becoming a mess. We had an air friar, and that air friar was being used and used and used repeatedly without cleaning. So our fire alarm in the apartment was. starting to go off every night because of the accumulated grease that was burning out. He needs his protein.

It's the chicken broccoli rice every day. This roommate is already scared of Damon. He decides to write a Post-it note and put on the air fryer asking the guy to clean the air-friar. Damon doesn't take that nicely. When he wakes up and see the Post-it note, he just crashes out. He not just yell at the guy, but he starts kicking the door. He's yelling, if you're a man, you're going to come out and talk to me. Why couldn't you just have a conversation with me about this?

You didn't have to put a post-it note. And to me, it's pretty clear why the other roommate did that, because he was literally trying to avoid this whole situation. So I get involved because I did not want Damon to actually touch the guy. I get Damon away from him. And that was the first incident. This incident kept going. I think we had four of those.

But never to me. Up until April, apparently three of his eggs went missing in the fridge. And he decided that I took his eggs. Oh, boy. The great egg caper of April. We did have a short of eggs, which I understand. It brought out the worst in him that scarcity. I wake up.

I think it's going to be a normal morning. I only have one class for the day. I need to do laundry so I get my laundry basket out of my room and he's in the kitchen. And the first thing that I see is him pointing at me. And he starts yelling at me. And he calls me a stealer that I've been stealing his. food. He knew that I took his eggs. I try to calm down the situation. And I'm like, I don't know what you're talking about, but can you please lower your voice? Let's figure this out. He did not

take that well. He escalated completely. He started coming at me. And then he was yelling slurs up until the point that he was about to touch me. And then at that point, Monica would be really proud of me because I threatened to call the cops. Yes, 911. Good job, guys. I favorite. I think that's carried him off. I went to my room, locked the door. He did the same thing of kicking and yelling. But I was so fed up, so I just told him to fuck off. If not, I was going to call the cops. He did.

I was very overwhelmed after that situation, so I decided to get off the apartment, go to my friend's place. That same night, we were planning to booty pump, but, you know, it didn't work out. Okay. He sent me a text a little while after the whole situation, explaining that he did not feel like himself. He's been going through so much with that. the paternity court and his whole situation with the son and everything. And I'm like, I get it, but at the same time, I don't think this is a reasonable behavior for you to be having with your roommates. That was my last actual interaction with Damon. After that, I got so scared to live

in my own apartment that I was couch surfing. And whenever I completely knew that Damon was not in the apartment, I would come back. But it was some very stressful time. And that's when my parents actually got involved in this and found out that he had a couple better returns. charges and he had two aggravated domestic violence charges. That's when I was finally able to talk to my complex office to sort of get him out of our leaving zone. So that was my story about how a gym friend became a crazy roommate. This is also a mesh of stories.

That's true. It was also a crazy roommate. It's right. Yikes. Boy, there's a lot here. Was it easy for them to get him out of that apartment? Our apartment complex, we go through some background check. It wasn't easy just because they approved the background check and in Florida, we have

some laws for like non-discriminatory protection. But I think he was also just fed up with us that the office kind of offered him to leave without having to pay anything. And then he kind of took the bait and left. Gosh, so he's still out there. That was only a few months ago. Was he getting visibly bigger? He's our next caller.

Was he jacked? Were the Royds working? The roids were working. There are so many young dudes on roids, and yeah, they're so emotionally unstable. Yeah. It's insane. Well, it's fucking with their hormones. Oh, boy.

Oh, boy. So he wasn't romantically in love with you. To me, and I can't. You're not supposed to diagnose people that you've never met, and especially if you're not a psychologist, which I'm not. But it sounds a little BDP. He immediately was obsessed with you. Yeah.

It did sound like that, but then the roids made more sense. It also just points out how tenuous our grip on acting normally. is. Like, you add a little bit of this into your body and then mentally you're unhinged. The thing that stuck with me was how normal he seemed in the beginning and how quickly things changed. And that kind of scared me off from building new friendships and stuff like that because we never know what's going to happen. You don't know. It's true. Oh, boy. Well, Alex, you're a delight to me. Yeah. I can see where someone really wanted to live with you and be friends. You're very friendly. No, this is totally insane. I just wanted to

tell Monica that Monica is my biggest parosocial relationship. Oh, I love being on the other side of the parosocial relationship. Yeah, yeah. All right, well, good luck with everything. You're about to start your senior year? This is first day of classes, so I'm going to class in about an hour. Oh, my God. Enjoy it.

Enjoy your last year. Thank you, guys. Hi. Thank you for having me. Take care. Hi there. Kate? Hi.

How are you? Oh, cute sletcher. Thank you so much. And cute sunshine pendant. Was that what we don't call it a pendant? Charm? What is it? What do we call that?

Necklace. Well, isn't the necklace the round part? Okay, I don't want to get into it. I think a pendant. Okay, good, good, good, good. And where are you, Kate? I'm in St. Pete, Florida. Are you shortening St. Petersburg?

I am, yes. Oh, okay, okay. And is Bush Gardens still thriving down there? Yeah, that's over in Tampa. I don't get there often, but it's still going. How far ever drive is that for you? 40 minutes? Yeah, it'd be like half an hour.

Oh, you're a short of. And what kind of heat are you dealing with down there right now? Oh, well, let's just say I shouldn't be wearing this sweatshers, but I did it for you guys. It's quite unbearable in the summer, but we're towards the end when it starts to get nice and reason why people move down here. And where are you from? I'm originally from New Jersey. Oh, lovely. I would imagine there's a lot of transplants from that area down there. Definitely. It's a really cool city. We've got the beach. There's a really cool, like, art scene down here. Okay, so you have a fun gym story, or I don't know if fun's a right word, but you have a Jim story. I have an interesting Jim story. Well, first I have to say, Monica, happy birthday. Oh, my goodness. Thank you. You guys, the arm juries are so sweet.

That's really nice. They all know your birthday. I'm her best friend, and I have to think constantly like, okay, this is this is coming. It's the 24th. You know, I'm not. I thought you forgot today. No, you thought so. This morning.

The second I saw you, I was singing, happy birthday. How could you refer? No, before. Or you just were anticipating I was going to come out and I was your birthday. Yeah. Okay. And then yesterday I was at your house saying. I thought you forgot.

Okay, okay, okay. But I really appreciate you knowing and thinking. Thank you. Oh, absolutely. So my gym story takes place here in St. Pete, Florida. This was in the spring of 2024. And for a little backstory, I had started dating my girlfriend a few months prior to this. And we actually met at the gym.

Monica, me cute. That's a different gym story, I guess. Yeah. So at this point, we'd been dating. just a few months. We're definitely like in the honeymoon phase of our relationship. And our gym was having a adult field day. Oh. They have it at a local park. It was like a Sunday adult field day that we had signed up for.

So that's where my story takes place. So the morning of the field day, we decided to go for a little walk beforehand. So my girlfriend, Jenna and I are walking our dog. And all of a sudden, this dog off leash comes flying at our dog. and latches onto his neck. So everything happened very quickly, but we're both holding mugs of coffee. The mugs of coffee are all over us. We're on the ground pulling this dog off. The owner comes over.

Luckily, our dog was okay. That's kind of the start of our day. So we start the day walking back to our house, pretty rattled. We've got coffee all over up. And I just had this feeling. I'm like, I don't know. Just something about that situation is telling me,

like, we just shouldn't do the gym thing today. We should just skip over this whole adult feel. day. I just have this intuition. But our dog was fine and she's like, you know what? We signed up for this. We've been looking forward to it. Let's just do it. We get ready. I throw on some gym shorts and I steal my girlfriend's Westphalia vintage t-shirt. I felt looked really cute. And she says to me, that is my favorite shirt. Please don't get grass stains on it. Which I'm like, I'm not going to get a grass stain, okay? An adult field day. So anyway, we take off to field day. There's probably like 120 to 150 people there.

There's a couple different vendors. They have a DJ. So it's really fun, like a little setup. Big turn up. Is there like events plan, like a three-legged race, that kind of stuff? Yep. So it's like the tug of war, the free-legged race, all that kind of stuff. Potato sack race.

Exactly. We were put on the same team. We knew a lot of people that went to this gym, but our team that we were paired with there were eight other people and we didn't know them. Start off, we do the tug of war, lose miserably. Next station, lose miserably. I should know my girlfriend and I are both like pretty competitive people. And like even though this is like a fun lighthearted day, I'm like, hey, we're here.

Like we're putting in the effort. Our team slacking a little bit. So we get to a race where it's all of the teams are competing at once. So there's like 12 of us and it's one of those relay races where there's the potato sag down and back and then you put the egg on, you know, very fun. So at this point we were down one person because one girl on our team just kind of gave up and was like, I don't want to do this anymore. So we're down to nine people.

Everybody else has got 10. So we start this potato sack goes. We do the egg. And I'm looking around and like, we're actually doing pretty good. Like we have a chance here. Like, all right? Like we're ready to take it off. I'm starting like the adrenaline's kicking.

And the very last portion of this race was running backwards. So you like run backwards to a cone turn around and run backwards. So we're standing there. There's a guy in front of me. And I'm like, hey, man, can I go in front of me? I'm really good at running backwards. And he's like, yeah, sure. I, if I were him on and be like, how do you know that?

I don't know. I don't know if you're good at running backwards. I don't know. I'm super confident. So I turn around. I make it about five strides and my foot catches and I just immediately go down. And I did exactly what you're not supposed to do, which, you know, my dad's a college basketball coach. And he always said like, if you're ever going to fall, don't put your arms back. That's exactly what I did.

So I put my arms back. And the second I go down on like, I'm. screwed. Like, this is not good at all. But I did not want to just lay there and have all of these people come over to wait and want the attention. So I'm like, okay, I've got to get up to finish this. So I pop back up, pull my arms like in close to me. I'm like, I just can't look down. No matter what I do, I just can't look down. So I finish the one and go back. On my way back, I catch eyes with my friend Chelsea. And she's like, are you okay? I'm like, absolutely not. Keep going. I see my girlfriend. I'm like, I'm not okay. I'm going over there. And nobody kind of really realized when I went down how

hard I was because I was just so embarrassed and I didn't want the attention. So I finally like run off behind to this little section where nobody was. And I look down and immediately pass out. They are just like dangling. My wrists just don't look like they're attached to my body. You've got silly hands now. What if you had popped up and ran and then looked and your hands weren't there? They were back on the ground still. So I come to and there's a few people, there's this one member who is a nurse and she was amazing. We had these like motivational plaques and she took those and put them on my wrist and like wrapped it up to get me to the hospital. I show up to the hospital and they do x-rays and I get put back into a room.

And pretty immediately they're like, we got to cut that shirt off. Like there's just no way we've got to cut that shirt up. So vintage shirt, completely ruined. And you certainly got grass stains on it when you fell backwards. Yeah, there's definitely some grass stains also, but now it's just totally rude. Oh my God. If I were heard, wait, can we just try to get it off? Well, but can we cut her arms off?

Exactly. Yeah, I don't need those. I just need the shirt. They get that off. And then they're basically like, we need to manipulate them. back into place before anything else. Do you remember those, like, finger traps that you had as a kid or you put in this? Yeah, we know what they used to be called.

I have a picture of this that they sent in, but this machine that they basically put me in, I have my hands up. All 10 fingers are in these. Oh, yes. They gave me some morphine, and then the doctor needed to manipulate my wrist back into place. Whoa. Whoa. Whoa.

Ew, this is wild looking. I broke both wrists. Once they saw the x-rays, they were like, okay, you're going to need to get surgery today. And as I mentioned, my dad is a basketball coach, and he's like, you're not getting surgery right now. Like, I want to call. I'm going to help you, like, find an orthopedic surgeon. So he's up in New Jersey and he's gone. So I end up leaving hospital.

I just discharge myself. I'm on all this medication. And the cast went from about here halfway up my arm. So past my elbow. So my arms are literally just stuck out like this. Oh, like Uncle Jesse. Yes. Yeah, okay.

Uncle Jesse. If you don't know that reference, like the position someone's in just before they start doing the robot, that's what you're stuck in, basically. Okay, but most people understand Uncle Jesse from Full House and it was really upsetting. And then he's stuck like this.

And it's sad. It's sad. And I think he wanted to hug someone and he kind of couldn't hug. I forget the details, but it's a sad episode. Okay. I end up getting in touch with a surgeon. the next day and they say that they can operate on me

at nine days. They have to do both arms at the same time. So I was wearing that for nine days. So I just want to remind you guys that I just got in a relationship. We actually had just moved in together. So my girlfriend needed to do absolutely everything for me from like feeding me to wiping my butt.

So that was the having been phase of my relationship. And without her t-shirt. Knowing you ruined her favorite shirt on top of it. I know. Oh, she's a good one then. Trial by fire. Can she actually come say hi? Before she does, I have a couple follow-up questions.

Were you on grass or pavement? Grass. You're just kind of uneven, I suppose. I was very nervous you were going to tell me that the bones were out when you stopped running. Oh, my gosh, like sticking out. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then last thing is, my friend Joy Ricardy, when Aaron and I were in eighth grade, we were skateboarding in the driveway, and he went off this lawn trip. And at this point, Aaron and I were in his garage having something to drink.

We hear him screaming and he runs in these holes. his arm and when he takes his hand off his arm, it bends like he has two wrists. I'm imagining that's what you had going up because it broke clean both those bones and he just had two wrists. It was alarming. Yeah, that is exactly what it was. Yeah. All right, let's meet your impossibly nice girlfriend. Yes, Jenna.

Hi. Hi, Jenna. I'm so sorry about your shirt. It sounded really cute. It was just pretty funny that that ended up that way. crazy start to the relationship. Has she made any effort to replace the t-shirt?

There's a lot of different websites that she could be, you know? Not yet. If we come across what, I'm sure she will. There's one at a store called Max Fields in Los Angeles. It's a Shenato-O-Connor vintage shirt. It is $2,000. Oh, my gosh. If you're interested in purchasing

that. Maybe. You could either go to Europe or you could get this T-shirt choice is yours. That can rip another one. Yeah, exactly. Well, it's lovely meeting you guys. I'm sorry you had such a terrible day at the field day. Have you guys been back?

Is that an annual event they do? We have not been back and I don't think that they've done field days. You ruined it. You ruined it. Well, thanks so much for calling. It's great meeting you guys. All right. Great to meet you.

Take care. Hi. We're confused by the sign-in name and then the name we think you're. Is it Steph? Yeah, Steph. Sorry, I'm on my husband's work laptop. We couldn't get mine to work, so here I am. And is your husband, I see a guitar hanging, but I also see some sound-dampening wall behind you.

What's happening in this room? Yes, this is my husband's cool shed office that he outfitted. Is that an animal back there? Like a seal. On the printer? Yeah. Oh, it's a sloth. A sloth.

I think we have that sloth. Our kids had that sloth. I think you have all the sloths that were ever made. That's true. Where are you stuff? I'm in Oregon and the Willamette Valley. Oh, lovely. And are you from there or did you move there? So we moved here about a year ago. From?

Long story, but Minneapolis and then England and then now here. Oh, my God. Sounds like a fun story. Boy, I immediately, my detective mind wants to know like what industries are thriving in both of those locations that you'd go back and forth. Okay, so you have a crazy gym story. Okay, so this is about six years ago when I still lived in Minneapolis. At the time, I was going to this very cool, trendy bouldering gym. I don't really know how else to describe it, but the cool kids went there. There was a kombucha bar, a yoga studio.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And you could stay and study if you wanted to, but obviously there was bouldering too. It was always super crowded, and it's where all the people gathered and minkled. So on this particular day, I had been there for about an hour, and I was working on this one route in particular and had really been wanting to try and finish it. I'd gone back and forth to it throughout the day. I had gotten close several times. There were other people there that were better boulders than me who had been failing at it. And I was close.

So I just was like, I'm going to get this. I was about to leave. Then I was like, okay, I'll just give it one more shot. Public service announcement to anyone who does anything dangerous, one last shot slash last run. The second you say that out loud, pack your shit up and go home. Do not ever proceed after one last shot. I wish I knew that PSA at the time.

So this particular route was on this inside corner. So the route was mostly on this wall, and then the last handhold was on this wall. The only way that I really could figure out how to do it was you had to jimmy your foot in once you got up there, and then just kind of like push off and hope for the best that your hand would get that hold. Are you wearing a line? You're in a harness? No. What?

Okay, okay. Bouldering is without the ropes. Oh, my God. The walls are not as high, but it was still one and a half story. Oh. And is there a pit under you? Not a pit. There's like a mat. It's a two-foot mat. That's not enough. No.

I like jimmied my foot in and reached out for it and pushed off. And I got it. And my roommate was there and some friends below and I just heard them all cheering. And they were so excited for me. I was so excited. But then the force of pushing off caused me to kind of swing one way. And then on the back swing, my hand fell off. And I fell. Oh.

And when you're bouldering, you can fall well. Like, I had fallen well many times. You fall on both feet and then you just kind of roll back and it's great. But I fell with the full impact on my ankle. Oh. Well, because you're so off-balance. If you were in a pendulum state and that brought you off of your hold, right? Your scatty wampas to begin with.

You're not falling now straight, right? You're falling sideways-ish. Yeah, it was problematic. So I hit the ground and I just heard the cheers. immediately turn to like gasps and screams of horror. That's the worst part. You had the whole spectrum of human emotion in like three seconds. And I didn't feel any pain at this point, but I knew it was bad because the way people were reacting.

So then I looked down and where my foot is supposed to be, I just see bones sticking straight out of my leg. Oh. Oh, no. Oh, no. What do they call that? They call that a certain kind of fracture. When it comes out of your skin, what's it called? A gross one.

An open dislocation is what it was called. Oh, God. There's blood gushing everywhere. There's just like a pool of blood at this point. Anytime bones are on the scene, it's like, oh, fuck. Really disrupts the natural order of things. Yeah, and it was kind of like if you sprain your ankle on a curb and it rolls inward, but it just kept going. So my foot was like still technically attached.

found out later was only attached by skin. No. But it was like folded all the way up and I was staring at the bottom of my shoe. The sole of your shoe. No. Yeah, like imagine Monia came all the way. Oh, fuck, man. All the way up.

I can imagine passing out from the side of that. I'm not one to pass out easily, but I was feeling close at that point. Like I was like, either I'm going to throw up or pass out. But once I saw it, I just started screaming, fuck. over and over again. And it was like this kid-friendly gym, so I felt kind of bad about it. What were you going to do?

I know. I mean, I feel like if there's an appropriate time to use the F word, that's when it is. Like, the kids will understand. Yeah, they need to learn. They need to learn when it's appropriate to use that word, and that's it. But my roommate said that at that point,

she saw people just exiting in droves, and she saw one girl go and throw up. It was chaos. Like, it was pretty much completely silent in the gym, except for my screams. and someone obviously called the paramedics. There was a few people surrounding me. There was randomly a boulder there who was also a nurse,

and she came and helped me out. And I asked someone to grab my phone and call my husband. And so I had him on speakerphone, and he was kind of keeping me calm. But then when the paramedics arrived, someone took my phone away, and to this day just remember being so pissed about that. I was like, he's what's keeping me calm.

Like, why did you do that? Yeah. But yeah, so the paramedics got there, and they said they were going to give me something that would not numb the pain but make me dissociate from it. So they pumped me full of that stuff and then they kind of splinted the ankle

slightly to get me on the stretcher. God bless paramedics. You imagine anything worse than re-articulating someone's folded up. But they probably get a lot of joy out of it. Yeah, it was like a 15-minute drive to the ER.

And when I got there, the people that greeted me kind of took a look at the situation and they said, okay, we're going to put you for a few minutes just to stabilize you. And then they said, by the way, we can't find a pulse on your foot. So you might wake up without one. I was so high at the time on whatever the paramedics had given me that I did not give a shit about that.

I was just like, please don't cut my climbing shoe. That's all I care about. Please don't cut it. It was so expensive. Isn't it funny, the human brain? As somebody who's been in several motorcycle accidents, your literal first thought is like, is the bike broken? Like, how could that be your thought?

Yeah. And it's covered in blood. I've never worn them again. I don't know why. So they put me under, when I woke up, I still had a foot. Oh, thank God. Yeah, because you could have torn all the vascularity and stuff. Pretty much everything was torn off.

They told me it was hanging on by, like, just threads of skin. I had major surgery the next day, and then I was there for a few days for the antibiotics, and then they discharged me. So I still have a foot. I'm so glad to hear that. plates in there. They thought they were going to, but they actually didn't have to. It was a really crazy injury.

It was really rare. I fell and didn't break any bones at all. Oh, popped at all. Yeah. What? Where the leg meets the foot just split right at the perfect spot of those bones. If you ever make a chicken, a roast chicken, and then you're carving it, the wings just pop right off at the joint.

That's what happened. There's photos. Oh, fuck. This might be the first set of photos. I don't know if I can look at. Okay, so this was after they splintered it, and this was in the ambulance. Oh, my fucking heavens, dude. That's the worst photo I've seen on the show.

Oh, that's an honor. What is happening? Steph, step, step, step, step, step. Oh, my fucking God. I don't even get it. And I can't stop staring at it, and it's so vile. You can see the little bit of blue, and that's my shoe. Yep.

It's still the wrong way. I was seeing a shoe just pushed up. All they did is they ace band. your shoe to the side of your leg. They just taped your shoe with an ace paint. They were pretty much like, let's just keep the foot from falling fully off before we get there. Wow. Wow.

How soon were you back out bouldering ever? I'm a therapist. And so I was like, I got to do some exposure therapy on myself. So I did eventually go to a climbing gym with ropes and I climbed, but my hands were just like shaking the whole time. I don't enjoy it anymore. Yeah. But I just don't want to be afraid of anything.

in my life. And so I knew I had to do that to get over the fear. But yeah, it's not the same. I know everything about your childhood from that last sentence. I just don't ever want to be afraid of anything in my life is a very... Well, no one likes being afraid. It's horrible. And I can relate. Oh, man. Yikes. Well, I'm so glad you walked away with your foot. Good job. Well, take care. you so much.

Oh, thank you. I imagine that she woke up from her surgery and she looked down and there was like a Mr. potato head foot just stuck in there. That's what you thought was going to happen. Like they put a prosthetic foot on him. No, Mr. Potato Head. Have you ever seen them? Or the actual whole potato?

No, Mr. Potato Head's foot. Okay, got you. Got you. Have you ever played with Mr. Potato? Of course. You can't grow up in America and that spends some time with Mr. Potato. It was like a little shoe, I think. White little shoe and you just plug it in there.

She just wake up and look and that's just where her foot was. Well, and if you see in that photo, there is a hole they could have put a plug in. Potato. I know. That's a rough picture. Sorry about that last one, but hey, you get what you get and you don't ask for seconds. What is it? You don't get upset.

You don't get upset. Okay. Oh, love you and happy birthday. Thank you. All right. Bye-bye. Do want to sing a tune or something? I want to sing a tune or something?

I want to sing a theme song. Oh. thing song for this new show so here I go go go we're gonna ask some random questions and with the help of our cherries won't get some suggestion on the flyer rhymed dish on the flyer rhyme dish enjoy